Two future climate scenarios have been proposed for the the Western Amazon region - state of Acre, Brazil - using the HadRM3 regional climate model for global solar radiation (Rg). The two climate scenarios, A2 (pessimistic) and B2 (optimistic), are based on findings of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. Two distinct seasons were defined for both climate scenarios (dry and rainy): the dry season (from April to September) and the rainy season (from October to March). We chose the time period between 1961 and 1990 as baseline and carried out future simulation from 2070 to 2100 for the A2 and B2 settings. The grid point conversion of the HadRM3 model was based on the Ordinary Kriging method. The smallest values of Rg are found for the western part of Acre state during the dry season in both scenarios. Intermediate values of Rg are observed for the north to south direction, followed by the highest values of Rg for the east side of the state, with significant increase of Rg during the rainy season between 2080 and 2090 for both settings adopted in this study. Based on descriptive and exploratory statistics for the optimistic, pessimistic, and baseline settings, we conclude that the positive radiative forcing tends to warm the land surface, while the negative radiative forcing tends to cool it. This was observed in the formation of the gradient in the east to west direction of the state of Acre in both seasons during the study period.
Western Amazonia; climate change; future projections; numerical simulation